GRAY, Maine — Conservative, combative Republican Gov. Paul LePage has a phrase for the three-way race that pits him against Eliot Cutler, an independent who almost beat him four years ago, and Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud, who would be the first openly gay person elected governor if he wins in November.

"This is what I call the 'hate season,' '' LePage said at a recent campaign event held in a dusty gravel pit here, where he put on a white hard hat to be endorsed by a contractors' trade association. "For the next few months it's going to be brutal out there.''

"Brutal" is also how critics describe LePage's record since 2010, when he became governor with 39% of the vote in a three-way race. LePage cut welfare rolls, vetoed Medicaid expansion, passed an income tax cut and then reduced municipal revenue sharing to pay for it — all the while calling legislators "idiots,'' state workers "corrupt,'' and telling the NAACP to "kiss my butt.''

"He's piggish and bullheaded and not really listening to what the people are saying,'' says Rebecca Kowaloff, 30, a doctor and Democratic voter in Portland.

LePage attributes his style to his Dickensian childhood. The oldest of 17 kids in a poor French-speaking family in industrial Lewiston, as a young boy he ran from a violent father and was homeless for two years until other families and mentors helped him through to college.

"You can't be on the streets at 11 years old, and try to make your way through life, and be the most polished guy,'' he says. "But I'll tell you one thing, I am the most honest.''

Democrats believe they have a strong candidate this year in Michaud, 59. A third-generation paper mill worker who never attended college and stayed on the job until he went to Washington in 2002, he can compete with LePage for blue-collar and Franco-American loyalty.

"The difference is, I haven't forgotten where I came from,'' Michaud said in an interview. He criticizes LePage for kicking people off welfare — he wants to provide some benefits for people in low-wage jobs — and for "the negativity he keeps spewing."

"People need help and we have to do what we can to help them,'' Michaud says. "This governor has adopted policy that hurts people.''

Michaud has won six terms by hefty margins in the northern, more conservative half of Maine and before that served as president of the state Senate. In a newspaper op-ed last fall, Michaud acknowledged he is gay.

"Whatever (the reaction) is, it's been. It's no longer a story,'' says Sandy Maisel, a political scientist at Colby College in Waterville.

Polls show a tight race with few undecided voters: the Real Clear Politics poll average has LePage and Michaud virtually tied at 38% and Cutler trailing with 17%. Once again, the campaign may be a race to 40%.

As a result, Cutler, an environmental lawyer who says LePage "has embarrassed the hell out of the state,'' is fending off the label of spoiler. Mainers have elected independents as governors twice since 1974, including now-Sen. Angus King. "In Maine, independents are not spoilers, we're winners,'' Cutler says. "I'm a choice, which is what people in Maine want.''

But the prospect of another three-way race has "anybody but LePage" voters nervous.

"I fear we are wavering,'' said Susan Morris, an undecided voter at a Michaud meet-and-greet in a Portland art gallery. "We need to choose our horse early and stick with it.''

LePage fulfilled a promise to cut the state's debt by freezing future cost-of-living allowances on pensions and paying off $184 million in Medicaid reimbursement to state hospitals that had been owed for years. That won admiration from Alan Gould, a construction supplies salesman from Freeport.

"He 's been true to his word,'' Gould says. "He's done a good job creating jobs, just like he said he was going to, and he's changed the climate of the state of Maine to be more pro-business.''

But how many new voters LePage can win over, after three years of controversy, is less clear. "I don't know if (his support) is any stronger than it was before,'' says Rick Storey, a supporter and president of the construction firm that hosted LePage's gravel pit endorsement. "It's the working class that really supports Paul LePage.''

"You couldn't say anything about him that would knock him down below 37%," says political scientist Christian Potholm of Bowdoin College in Brunswick. "Conversely, he could invent a cure for cancer and 60% would say he faked it.''